Overruling and the instability of law
By: Nicola Gennaioli, Andrei Shleifer.
Contributors: Shleifer, Andrei.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 12913; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 12913.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "We investigate the evolution of common law under overruling, a system of precedent change in which appellate courts replace existing legal rules with new ones.  We use a legal realist model, in which judges change the law to reflect their own preferences or attitudes, but changing the law is costly to them.  The model's predictions are consistent with the empirical evidence on the overruling behavior of the U.S.  Supreme Court and appellate courts.  We find that overruling leads to unstable legal rules that rarely converge to efficiency.  The selection of disputes for litigation does not change this conclusion.  Our findings provide a rationale for the value of precedent, as well as for the general preference of appellate courts for distinguishing rather than overruling as a law-making strategy"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 6/5/2007.

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